GUEST COMMENTER-JUDGE WILLIAM J. GIOVAN*

After my earlier post about my swearing in by Judge William Beer of the Oakland County Circuit Court ,(including some references to Judge Beer's interesting life/lives off the bench) I received this comment from Judge Willam J. Giovan, retired judge of the Wayne County Circuit Court.  More about Judge Giovan can be found at the end of this post.  The comment is published here with his permission.

"One day I was on Belle Isle for some reason and I encountered Judge Beer strolling with a suit and straw hat. I waved at him and he waved back. When I return to my office in CAYMC later I told my secretary quizzically that I had seen Judge Beer on Belle Isle and wondered what he was doing there because he was an Oakland County Circuit judge. She said, "Oh I know that whole family and they live right over there. This did not compute in my mind because I knew that the judge had to live in Oakland County, but  eventually I didn't think any more of it. Sometime later  I found out Why Judge Beer might be strolling around Belle Isle."

*William Giovan is a product of Guardian Angels grade school and DeLaSalle High School.  Though he retired from the Wayne County Circuit Court, he remains active as a visiting judge in many forums, and is a Wayne County Circuit Court Discovery Master.  He is a member of the Barbershop Quartet, the Forum Shoppers, which performs around town.  He gave an interview to Motion Magazine in 2009, full of dry humor.  It can be found here.  He listed his hobbies as:

"Quartet singing, tennis, rowing, fencing. Every other spare moment is spent on Free Cell."  I was a fencer in law school and he once called with some leads on getting back involved.  Still have to follow up on that.

But, importantly in my opinion, he long ago recognized the defects in the Michigan  premises liability law's "Open and Obvious" doctrine with which I heartily agree.